Week 1 – Brighton fastest out of the traps

In keeping with the Olympian theme of the summer, we’re ‘off and running’ with a brand new season of Fantasy Football ! 😊

Brighton top the early season Premier League table and four of their players make the Week 1 Team of the Week:-

I’ve kept the old format of the Team of the Week/Season on the Player Stats Portal so as we can a) see previous Weeks if needed but also quickly see the £m prices, useful I think for spotting and transferring in those cheap ‘enabling’ players, a particular feature of the Telegraph version of Fantasy Football.

So, from the above we can see the four Brighton players as J. van Hecke (£2.8m), J. Veltman (£3.2m), K. Mitoma (£3.6m) and D. Wellbeck (£3.4m). Welbeck is also our Star Man of the week, having scored the joint highest points (10) but also for being the cheapest of those highest points scored.

Of the more familiar and popular names, B. Saka (£5.8m), M. Salah (£7.2m) and K. Havertz (£5.1m) also start very well notching 10 points each.

Some other non-Brighton good value players jumping out in particular from Week 1, those being T. Livramento (£2.9m) of Newcastle and A.Onana (£3.1m) of Villa.

I noticed the Telegraph do a rather basic version of the Team of the Week but, curiously I can’t quite work out how they’ve picked the Defenders. Here we go by points scored obviously but then by Value £ e.g. show the cheaper and ‘better value’ options when the points are tied. Personally I think that’s a more useful method but, feel free to leave any comments if you dear reader have any differing thoughts ! 😊

Clearly it’s very early days to gain much more in the way of insights from the data on the Player Stats Portal but, in seeking out those cheaper enabling players which is a key strategy for success in TFF, I’ve filtered and ordered the Player Selector report as following:-

Goalkeepers and Defenders under £3 mil highlights names already mentioned in the Team of the Week but also the likes of J. Steele (£2.9m) of Brighton as well as M. Flekkon (£2.9m) of Brentford and N. Neto (£2.7m) of Bournemouth were you to prefer non-Brighton cheap keeper alternatives.

A quick check on the Fixture Difficulty table above shows Brighton as having the better run of early fixtures mind you, compared to Brentford and Bournemouth.

With regards to Defenders, new signing L. Hall (£2.7m) of Newcastle jumps out although BEWARE that Newcastle have the toughest set of forthcoming fixtures!

Cheaper Midfielders and Attackers not already discussed:-

highlights Attackers such as Y. Wissa (£3.3m) or the more expensive B. Mbuemo (£3.9m) both of Brentford. A. Semenyo (£2.8m) – especially cheap ?! , J. Vardy (£3.4m) and C. Wood (£3.5m) also looking promising very early on.

Midfielders such as M. Wieffer (£3.2m) and Joelinton (£3.5m) could also be worth keeping an eye on?

It is of course VERY EARLY to make any conclusions but, back to the title of this blog and Brighton with their four Team of the Week players and reasonable forthcoming fixture difficulty:-

They top the Team table in terms of Points scored and Value for money (Pts £m) but also (along with Brentford) have relatively low % Picked By scores – if Brighton do continue to perform well, their players could give you the edge compared to your fellow gamers….?

Next week we’ll check to see how the % owned by changes, one would expect to see these increase for Brighton although, I don’t think any of us (rounded to 0% Picked By!!) saw good old ‘Welbs’ as he’s affectionately known by his previous club’s supporters, first week points haul coming !! 😆👏